


Wild Things

by Morgana



Series: Back From the Brink [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-07
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-28 12:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2733425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Breakthroughs can happen in the strangest ways</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wild Things

Riley sometimes thought about the first time he'd seen a tiger lounging on the floor of its cage in the small zoo near his hometown. It had been old and tired, its fur ragged after years of living in captivity, but for all that, there had been a might and majesty to the great cat that took his breath away. He'd read the sign beside the cage and discovered that it had been born in India, and when he asked his mother how it had gotten to Iowa, she'd explained that tiger hunters had captured it and brought it to the zoo. 

For weeks afterward, Riley dreamed of being a tiger hunter. He wanted to scoop a cub up and hold that kind of power in his hands so he could bring it home with him. His mother watched him drag one feral barn cat after another into the house, only to have them all go streaking out the door at the earliest opportunity before she told him one day, "Son, sometimes wild things just need to stay wild." 

Those words had sometimes come back to him when he was in the Initiative, usually when one of the more intelligent demons would actually look at him through the glass on one of his late-night rounds after patrol. A few times he'd looked at them in return and seen the trapped yearning of a wild creature longing to be free and his soul had shuddered at the knowledge that he had indeed become a tiger hunter, and it wasn't nearly as wonderful as he'd once thought. 

Buffy taught him to hunt the vampires and demons on their own ground, but it wasn't until he'd taken Spike in that Riley remembered why he'd wanted to hunt tigers in the first place. It was all about having a truly wild being close enough to touch, about the power that could be contained in a lean frame and the predatory light that sometimes entered golden eyes if he moved unexpectedly. It was the thrill of being allowed closer than most people ever got to one of nature's most powerful and efficient killing machines and the even bigger one of walking away intact afterward. It was about the yearning to reach out and touch the tiger, to stroke it and listen to its contented growl after it ate, to coax it to stay because it wanted to rather than because it was bound with chains or chips or the madness of a newly restored soul. 

He'd never expected to tell Spike any of that, but there was one night that the hallucinations were particularly bad, when nothing he tried seemed to drive them away. The pain in Spike's eyes had been almost unbearable and Riley found himself kneeling down beside the vampire, reaching out to run soothing fingers over a ridged forehead, doing anything he could to take some of his agony away. When golden eyes shot up to meet his, the story of the tiger and his childhood dream came pouring out. He didn't know whether it was the tigers, the steady stroke of his hand, the sound of his voice, or whether Spike had just exhausted himself, but the vampire was asleep by the time Riley finished talking. 

He probably should've been surprised or upset to wake up the next morning and discover Spike's bedroll and canteen missing, but he really wasn't. Riley knew it was pointless to go looking for him - after all, he wasn't a tiger hunter any longer, and his mother had been right: sometimes, wild things really did need to stay wild.


End file.
